Well, strictly speaking its not a “Blood Bowl” elf per se, but the figure is painted for use in my Blood Bowl games.

The miniature is from Shadowforge and a very nice figure it is too. Some of the Shadowforge sculpts are a bit overly sexualised for my tastes, with high heels, chainmail bikinis, S&M accoutrements and ensembles etc, but these figures dont suffer too badly from that.

Obviously long flowing hair isnt very practical in a contact sport and the “belly top” (are they still even called that?) seems more of a fashion statement than a sporting decision, but in the context of the vaguely WWE panto that is Blood Bowl, I am ok with this look.

I found this photo while confirming that common or garden humans do still use the phrase (and indeed occasionally wear) “belly tops”. I can confirm that “belly top” is still in use as a term and also a garment, as this mildly amusing photo shows.

The sculpting, detail and general design of the figure combine to give a simple and somehow vintage look. There are few extraneous bits and pieces hanging off the figure but it still has lots of character. I like this approach to miniature design. The figure looks more iconic than the overburdened designs often seen from GW and the like. Extra detail does not automatically make a figure better.

The model was very nicely sculpted and cast too. It was genuinely a pleasure to paint, largely because of the clearly defined sculpting.

I considered painting the gems blue rather than the amethyst that they ended up, but I wanted to use some of my new purple paints.

I also couldnt decide on a suitable area to paint the player number on, which is a bit of a failing for a miniature designed for use in a football game. I may resort to simply painting the number on the base, but that somehow feels like cheating.

The yellow and orange were painted in ways that I hope will be fast and simple to replicate (I do have about twenty more BB elves to paint after all), whenever I get the Blood Bowl urge next. The pale flesh (of which there is a fair amount) was a bit time consuming to paint, but painting any significant area of flesh to any sort of decent standard always takes a while really.

As a test piece for my long awaited (since the 1980s) Blood Bowl elf team I am reasonably pleased with it.

Thanks apeekaboo. I used more white in the skin tone than I would normally: I like my elves pale. The grey hair helps with that pale, otherworldly look, but it isnt really visible in the shot…

The very slightly yellow, alabaster looking elves as depicted in Hellboy II are close to an ideal representation to my eyes. I didnt want to add a yellow to the flesh tone here though, for a few reasons (the armour is yellow, I didnt want the figure to look jaundiced, etc).

As for numbering, the shoulder pads do have some flat area, but they could only accommodate very small numbers, and double digits would be a pain. I have painted very small numbers on BB figures before and they worked out well but it was a long time ago, before I started wearing glasses and when I had more patience, so I and not in a rush to do it again.

The orange part of the forearms is probably the easiest place to number, but I think that it would look peculiar and spoil the lines on the figure too. I think that I will avoid the numbered arse option too if at all possible…